Monday, 9 February 2009

One of the problems that occurs when all children cycle to school is that they tend to drop litter. Here's a solution to the problem: a "blikvanger" or "can catcher". On routes used by a lot of children to get to school you find these litter bins for cyclists to throw their litter into without stopping.

This is an older style cyclists rubbish bin, using a net instead of a metal cone, on a route north of Assen. The opening is about a metre wide, and the cycle path is 2.5 m wide. It's on a popular rural school route.

It also features on our article about how waste and recycling is dealt with in the Netherlands.

Update November 2009: This short piece in the local news paper about publicity surrounding an anti-litter campaign shows the size of these bins. The openings are a metre in diameter, so that even those with not such a good aim can get their litter into the bin while moving. If you're going to copy this initiative for your own city, you need to get the scale right !

This is one of those small things that makes a difference for cyclists.

The type with the net was also placed at the end of motorway/highway offramps. At the end of the 90's I've read (can't remember where) that after placing these bins the cost of roadside cleaning along those motorways (at least in the province Noord-Brabant) was reduced considerably.

Note that this was meant as fun too. Note that they are called 'blikvanger' which means eye-catcher, but litteraly also 'tin-can-catcher'. Someone thought long and hard about how to make throughing rubish in a bin more attractive to people.They can be found all over the country but nearly always near schools.

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A cyclist in a cycling family living in the capital of the cycling province of the world's greatest cycling country.
I was born in the UK, lived for over 8 years in New Zealand and have lived in the Netherlands since 2007.
I organise cycling infrastructure study tours, run an online bicycle shop, arrange cycling holidays and write a popular blog about cycling.
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